THE authorities were accused of complacency yesterday after two people were
killed on the new Ayia Napa to Paralimni road in the fourth fatal accident
since it was opened 18 months ago.

The two young men were killed in a horrific road accident on Boxing Day at
a stretch that horrified residents have dubbed the 'Road of Death'.

Nineteen-year-old conscript George Kkaras, who plays football for the
Paralimni team, and his close friend, student Savvas Mavroudis, 21, were
killed after their car was rammed on the side by another car carrying four
passengers, who were lightly wounded.

The impact was so violent that the car the two friends were travelling in
was cut in two while the other car stopped around 30 metres down from the
collision point.

The accident happened at around 4.45am.

The two friends, returning home to Paralimni from a night out, had just
stopped for sandwiches from a vendor at a petrol station.

Kkaras, who was driving Mavroudis' car, drove a short distance towards Ayia
Napa to a set of traffic lights allowing him to return to the lane going
towards Paralimni.

But as he was turning, the car was hit by a Mercedes, thought to have been
travelling at high speed, from the direction of Ayia Napa.

The collision ejected the two friends onto the island in the middle of the
junction. They died instantly.

The latest lethal accident on the road has sparked outrage among Paralimni
residents, who claim the way it was designed was extremely dangerous.

DISY deputy Antonis Karas yesterday charged the road had been designed with
specific financial interests in mind and pledged to examine the issue
further by calling experts to give their views.

"It is unacceptable that authorities designed a road to serve one or two
people," Karas said.

He added that the exits to the road were lethal and accused police of not
patrolling the road despite the well-known dangers.

"If one police car patrolled the road then many accidents would have been
avoided," Karas said.

The particular stretch is littered with traffic lights; residents say some
are highly confusing with green filters confusing drivers.

Residents yesterday demanded the construction of flyovers to ensure safe
entries onto both sides of the road.

CYPRUS' chief European Union negotiator and United Democrats chairman
George Vassiliou yesterday suggested the presidential elections be
postponed until July - the end of the Greek presidency of the European
Union.

Speaking after meeting President Glafcos Clerides, Vassiliou said the
impetus for his suggestion was the massive anti-Denktash rally by Turkish
Cypriots on Thursday.

"The message they sent to everyone in Cyprus and abroad, and I believe to
Turkey especially, was that we must have a solution, the island should be
reunited in order to secure everyone's future and security," Vassiliou
said.

"(We) should do everything possible for a solution; I suggest the
postponement of the elections until the end of the Greek presidency."

He defended his position saying the postponement would send the right
message, and encourage Europe, the US and the UN Security Council to
intensify their efforts to solve the problem.

Vassiliou said there are two clear choices: "One is to deny all human
rights to the refugees and the others and turn the Green Line into a border,
and the other solution is within the framework of the UN plan," he said.

He said acceptance of his proposal was possible.

"Deep down we can all have different policies regarding various things but
I do not want to accuse anyone of lack of patriotism," Vassiliou said.

He said the issue was whether the big parties would agree and suggested
that DIKO leader Tassos Papadopoulos, as the most important candidate in
the elections, should take the initiative.

"Mr. Papadopoulos himself should propose to the House to make this decision,
which should be unanimous, and then we should have the elections in July,"
Vassiliou said.

"If we do have a solution then everything changes; if we do not, Mr.
Papadopoulos has to gain from such a move," he added.

Government Spokesman Michalis Papapetrou, speaking in a personal capacity,
described Vassiliou's proposal as very interesting.

"I am sure the people he is addressing, and they are not the government,
will study the proposal carefully," Papapetrou said.

He added that the government did not wish to comment on the matter at this
point.

The spokesman explained that the Greek presidency of the EU and the
activity around the Cyprus problem could create conditions that were worthy
of consideration by the parties.

Papapetrou said Clerides had still not revealed anything to him about his
own intentions on whether or not to stand for re-election.

"I think the President keeps any thoughts on the issue sealed in his mind
and when he announces them you will find out as well as I," Papapetrou
said.

He added that Clerides did not need anyone's advice on the matter, noting
that in the past his own "supposed advice" had become the focus of
"malicious abuse".

Papadopoulos described the proposal as an attempt to remain in power.

"It is the last resort to cling on to power," the DIKO leader said.

He said it would give a stronger message if such desperate efforts to stay
in power were abandoned and the negotiations were dealt with seriously.

"All the scenarios we have heard in the past three months concerned not
having the elections - having a government of national unity, postponing
the elections, cancelling constitutional provisions, which are the
strongest protection shield of this state," Papadopoulos said.

He added: "And now the new proposal for everyone to withdraw so that a DISY
candidate would stay in power."

DISY chief Nicos Anastassiades, who met Clerides yesterday morning, said
they did not discuss the upcoming presidential elections.

He added that it was a clearly personal issue concerning the President.

KISOS leader and presidential candidate Yiannakis Omirou reiterated
yesterday that his candidacy could only be re-examined in the event of
prospects for a solution and widespread support for a short extension of
Clerides' term.

A REFUGEE family from Galini who spent three years wading in pools of water
during the winter rains because the Town Planning Department failed to
carry out repairs is to have its roof repaired early next month, the
authorities said yesterday.

In a letter to the Cyprus Mail, which highlighted the family's plight on
December 21, the department said a contract had now been awarded for
repairs to the roofs on the government housing estate in Strovolos and that
work would begin next month.

Only a week ago, Michalis Constantinou, 50, from Strovolos Refugee Estate 3,
told the Cyprus Mail how he had been battling with up to 15 centimetres of
water in the bungalow he shares with his wife and daughter after the recent
heavy rains.

He said he had put planks of wood on the ceiling and that the walls were
crumbling, while the living room and his daughter's bedroom had to be
covered with plastic sheets to keep out the water.

Constantinou informed the Town Planning department three years ago that
there was a problem, but the authorities kept putting his house and two
others on the back burner and telling them they would have to wait yet
another year due to lack of funding.

In the meantime the water had seeped into the walls and floors of the house,
causing the walls to flake and the plaster to drop.

THERE were mixed feelings among shop owners in Nicosia as they began
totting up Christmas sales yesterday, with large chains relatively happy,
while smaller businesses complained that a recent JCC strike had nearly
wiped them out.

Alexis Fylactou, the manager of Woolworth's in Ledra Street, said sales had
been relatively good this year.

"Apart from the trouble we had with credit cards after JCC went on strike,
we are satisfied with this year's sales," he said.

"We did feel a slight impact during the strike because even though we had
the customers, they did not carry large amounts of money on them in cash.
You don't just carry £1,000 worth of cash when you go shopping, and not
having cash made our customers a little bit cautious in their shopping."

The manager of Next at Ledra, however, said sales were already down this
year compared to 2001, but the three-week long JCC strike further worsened
the chain's sales during the Christmas period.

"We had to start accepting cheques again because people would just not shop,
" he said.

But smaller businesses were the most affected by the strike as they depend
on Christmas to rejuvenate their ailing businesses.

"People did not shop as much this year," said Leontios Moschatos, a clothes
shop owner.

"The credit card strike created a very big problem, and sales have gone
down critically. Shoppers would book the item they wanted because they
didn't have the cash to buy it, so they would leave a small deposit and
pick their clothes up when they received their 13th salary."

SHARE prices plunged almost five per cent yesterday, the first day of
trading following the Christmas break, with blue chips taking 6.5 per cent
hammering as investors hurried to dump bank stocks with no apparent reason.

Trading opened at 97 points and slid into an irreversible decline to close
90 minutes later at 93 on a volume of £2.2 million. The FTSE/CySE ended at
360 points.

All sectors except fisheries were down - between 2.4 per cent for tourism
to 6.7 per cent for insurance companies. The banking sector dropped 6.06
per cent with Bank of Cyprus (BoC) and Laiki coming under heavy pressure
that led to losses of 12 cents and six cents respectively, putting both at
the top of the most-traded list. Laiki ended at £1.25 and BoC at £1.34
after £1.2 million worth of its shares changed hands. Only 14 stocks showed
any gains compared to 63 decliners and 80 that closed unchanged.

At the beginning of the month, the market had been on the up and up as
investors looked forward to the good news of Cyprus` accession to the EU at
the summit in Copenhagen on December 12-13. However, since then, the index
has gone into a new decline.

"There are no reasons for this meltdown that has commenced after the
Copenhagen summit," said the xak.com analyst yesterday. "The looming war in
Iraq is not to blame and analysts as well as investors are short of making
sense of this bearish trend."

FIVE times more mobile phone text messages were sent out this year on
Christmas Day than the same day last year," CyTA confirmed yesterday.

A spokesman at the telecommunications authority declined to give out the
actual figure, but reports put the number of text messages sent at 360,000.
Many mobile phone users reported having difficulty in sending messages out
on Christmas Day due to the heavy traffic. The CyTA spokesman said there
was a combination of reasons for the increase in number of texts sent out
this year. In October, CyTA dropped the price of text messages from two
cents to one. It also gave customers the first 30 messages of the month
free of charge. "There are also more phones out there now," he said, adding
that market penetration had now reached 60 per cent or 400,000 mobiles in
use out of a population of some 750,000. The CyTA spokesman said voice
traffic was not affected by the upsurge in texting.